Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Steele, the Un-Obama

Some divine Anthropologist must be balancing the racial books for America, giving us an African-American as president who is a superbly talented politician and, to lead the opposition, another who can't seem to get out of his own way.

Michael Steele's un-Obama skills were on display at a party luncheon yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:

"The RNC chairman has managed to get into trouble with comic regularity during his first few months on the job. His latest brush with trouble had come only minutes before the lunch, when Fox News broadcast an interview with Steele in which he complained that party leaders--the very people he was about to have lunch with--have 'their knives bared' for him."

Milbank catalogues Steele's self-inflicted wounds as head of the Disloyal Opposition:

"He called Rush Limbaugh 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' He described abortion as an individual choice. He spent $18,500 decorating his office, which he had called 'way too male for me.' He offered some 'slum love' to Indian American Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, and speculated that the GOP base rejected Mitt Romney 'because it had issues with Mormonism.'"

In fairness, it's unlikely that anyone could galvanize today's remnant rabble of what was once the Grand Old Party, but Steele's ineptitude is looking more and more like a grotesque example of the Affirmative Action that Republicans always used to denounce.

The question now is how to depose him without adding accusations of racism to their heavy load of political baggage.

The opportunity may come up today at a meeting of state party heads who, if they curtail his power over funding, will be calling his threat to quit if they do.

Steele ended his rallying of the troops at yesterday's luncheon with "In the best spirit of President Reagan, it's time to saddle up and ride."